Wireless communication is commonly carried out over a network or system that, in general, can be characterized as having a base station and a plurality of remote stations that communicate wirelessly with the base station. Although a wireless communication system is not constrained by the need for wired connections to establish and maintain communications, such a system nevertheless faces resource constraints in supporting the wireless communications of the plurality of remote stations.
A wireless system transmits data over channels within a band of frequencies (i.e., bandwidth), the channels within the band permitting the transmission of voice and/or other data. A wireless frequency band has a limited amount of bandwidth, and such systems therefore are often confronted with more potential users than can be supported simultaneously by the wireless system's frequency or spectral bandwidth capacity.
Accordingly, some manner of allocating communication resources among the plurality of remote stations is needed if the system is to transmit voice and/or other data efficiently. One approach is to allocate limited communication resources among competing users on the basis, for example, of a so-called fair algorithm. Using such an algorithm, for example, a fairer allocation of bandwidth among multiple users may be achieved than would otherwise be accomplished with first-come-first-served queuing.
In addition, there is the need to allocate available base station transmitter power to support a plurality of users of a wireless communications system. Power allocation is especially important, for example, with spread-spectrum wireless communications systems, which have the inherent characteristic that one user's spread-spectrum signal is received by another user's receiver as noise with a certain power level.
Finally, because it is possible to have more remote users than can be supported simultaneously, the power control system should also employ some form of capacity management that rejects additional users when the maximum system power level is reached. One approach to the problems is an overload control scheme intended to prevent overloading of the call processing capability of a base station in a wireless communication system. The approach entails monitoring the level at which the base station is processing calls and reducing the base station's current present hand-off rate whenever its level of call processing exceeds a first threshold, the first threshold being less than the base station's maximum call processing capacity. If the hand-off rate exceeds a second threshold, a present rate of call originations is reduced along with the reduction of the hand-off rate.
Unfortunately, in making a decision as to whether to grant a call admission request, conventional methods and devices may not decide to admit or reject new calls on the basis of whether doing so will achieve a higher throughput for the communication system. Accordingly, the overall system throughput and associated service provider revenue may suffer.